Glimmerscape

The University of Choku Tsuki

Just as I was about to give up on noon class today Akiko San walked through the door. She chirped, "Ohio Gozimas!" and I returned the greeting. I immediately thought of the last time it was just Akiko and I for noon class; that day last week Sensei spent nearly a half hour teaching us the first two jo suburi: Choku Tsuki and Kaishi Tsuki.

As Sensei walked toward the changing room today Akiko asked, "can we do some more with the jo?" Sensei nodded and we went to unzip our weapons bags.

After we bowed in he said, "let's start with Choku Tsuki." He said that people don't realize that, while there is a lot going on in making what looks like a simple thrust, it really boils down to just a few elements.

After the opening stance, shown in the first photo, the first move is to step off a little to the left and bring the jo up to a mostly horizontal position. That's a transitional position in which you've moved out of the opening hanmi and into the thrust. That's the position shown in the second photo.

Reaching the final posture, the thrust is extended forward and the back hip circles to the right, lining up the body in Hitoemi, aimed right at the target. That's the position shown in the third photo. You can see how Goto Sensei's body nearly disappears, like a galaxy viewed on edge.

He repeated: "step one, get off line and bring up the jo; step two, rotate the back hip around behind while thrusting and sinking at the end. One [demonstrates], Two [demonstrates]."

I tried it. One. . .Two. One. . .Two. It was hard to do all of move One during move One. Parts kept spilling out into move Two. Move Two was easier, if only you did move One right. We did this for a while, actually about 15 minutes.

Then we practiced the same thing with the second jo suburi, Kaishi Tsuki. One. . .Two, and there went another 15 mintues. This kept alive our four-suburi-per-hour pace established at class last week. As we continued I was mildly astonished at how completely different Choku Tsuki felt doing it in those two steps, different but simpler and more accessible.

Goto Sensei elaborated on the finish. "Don't forget to sink at the end," he said. He told a story about how, back in Iwama, the students would tie a rope around a tree trunk and make thrusts into the middle of the tree. "Of course, the tree never moved, but if we didn't sink we would get bounced backward." After a period of time, (I wondered if it was anywhere near 15 minutes, but decided it was probably far longer) he said, "we'd find a way to sink into the thrust and not get bounced backward by the tree."

After such an extended look at Choku Tsuki and Kaishi Tsuki we practically raced through the next seven suburi, again taking them in steps to make sure we weren't cutting corners.

But the time we spent on Choku Tsuki seemed to have made everything seem simpler and more sensible. I remembered how Tatoian Sensei would now and then just let us do Tai no Henko for an entire class. It was the same thing: focus on a fundamental element in order to make everything that followed simpler and maybe even a little easier.

technorati tag aikido

Hitoemi: single layer

Today's weapons class marked the first day back with the Jo, so we started, as always, with suburi. Sometimes we just cycle through them as though we already know them and there's nothing to be gained by lingering over, say, suburi #1, choku tsuki.

Not today. Perhaps it was the residual effect of Hitohiro Soke spending about 15 minutes on Tai No Henko last Monday. Regardless, Goto Sensei made a point of unpacking the elements of the first two Jo Suburi so that by the time we'd finished with Kaishi Tsuki, half the time for class was over. It was time well spent.

There are different body postures for various stages in the execution of Jo suburi #1. One of the most important of these, Goto Sensei stressed, was the finish posture. As we extend into the thrust it is important to rotate the back hip behind as the back foot establishes hanmi. In this posture the entire body lines up into a single plane, such that the opponent can only see the front edge. The rest of the body is obscured. The Japanese name for this posture is "Hitoemi." Goto Sensei says it roughly translates as "single layer."

In the picture O-Sensei shows how Hitoemi is both an offensive and a defensive posture. It is offensive because it is adopted in the process of making a strike. it is defensive insofar as there is very little body surface for the opponent to target. It is like you are slicing straight through to the center of the opponent, while at the same time flattening out off line so that the opponent's attack misses. Pretty sneaky, but that's how it's done.

We practiced finishing both Choku Tsuki and Kaishi Tsuki, the first two Jo Suburi, in Hitoemi posture. It took a little extra rear hip movement to align the body just off the line of attack.

Finally, we made it past the first two Jo Suburi. We'd spent nearly a half hour on the various elements that go into making a precise forward thrust. Over the remaining minutes we methodically covered the next three, Ushiro Tsuki, Tsuki Gedan Gaishi, and Tsuki Jodan Gaishi. Each seemed to have a universe of key elements such that, if any one were left out or executed sloppily, the whole thing would break down.

I kept remembering how my usual practice is to race through the early suburi just to get to some of the more complicated and fun suburi, such as Hasso Gaishi Uchi. At this pace, we'll get to #14 sometime next month.

Even though we practiced putting our bodies into a "single layer," the complexity of seemingly simple thrusts with the jo appears, on closer inspection, to have many layers, just a few of which we examined today.

technorati tag aikido

Goto's Matrix

As the days have unfolded since last weekend's Memorial Day Gashuku I've found that some images and ideas have stayed with me. Of course one of the images is that of Hitohiro Saito Soke demonstrating the precise body position at the end of Tai No Henko. Another image is that of Dennis Tatoian Sensei wearing an eye patch.

But one of the most interesting ideas surfacing is from Hans Goto's Saturday afternoon class. In that day's post I wrote down the elements that Goto Sensei had in play:

1. Categories of keiko: Kihon, Yawarakai, Ki no Nagare, where Kihon is static, Yawrakai is flexible, and Ki no Nagare is flowing.

2. Elements of Aikido: Tai Sabaki, Kokyu Ryoku, and Ki Musubi, where Tai Sabaki is body position, hanmi, hips, spacing; Kokyu Ryoku is the marshaling of spiral power, and Ki Musubi denotes the blend, in which Nage merges with the body and energy of the attacker.

As I considered these factors, sort of hovering like gnats in my mind, they suddenly organized themselves in a neat matrix as though random stars converging into a recognizable constellation. I stopped and wrote down the scheme. It looked like this.

Immediately I realized that this scheme was probably what Goto Sensei was offering during class Saturday, and I was too distracted or dense to figure it out. But it made sense.

In Iwama Style aikido we tend to spend a long time working on basics of Tai Sabaki in Kihon training, since static techniques begin from a grounded set position, and it's easy to correct bad footwork, for instance. That's why the upper left cell gets developed first.

Moving down the column, a more sophisticated piece is Kokyu Ryoku, the spiral power deployed by the body to be the engine of Aikido, the physical dynamics within which Ki is expressed. Developing Kokyu Ryoku is very important for Kihon training, because without it many static techniques will never get started; the attacker is too strong and has grabbed too hard, and there you both are. Kokyu is a way to get things into motion from a static position, but only if you can command it. At Dennis Tatoian's dojo, when I was a kyu ranked student, we did Morote Dori Kokyu Ho at the beginning of every class, and sometimes uke would grab very hard. Muscle strength was useless in many cases because uke was physically bigger and stronger. Only Kokyu could move uke, and this is how, eventually, many of Tatoian Sensei's smaller students could do Morote Dori Kokyu Ho on anyone.

Even more elusive is Ki Musubi, or knotting your Ki with that of another, merging with their energy to achieve effortless execution. It seems to help if you also have good footwork and deploy Kokyu. Perhaps these elements are even necessary conditions required for the blend to happen in the first place.

Yet still all this can be progressing within the realm of Kihon training, as the diagram depicts. It's not as though we don't practice flexible or flowing keiko, we do. But these categories of training involve more movement, usually are executed more rapidly, and can become a refuge in which imprecision is tolerated simply because you move through it so fast. You just can't get away with sloppy footwork or lack of kokyu in static training. Focusing on Tai Sabaki, Kokyu Ryoku, and Ki Musubi at the Kihon level may make it more likely that your Yawarakai and Ki no Nagare Aikido will be powerful and effective too.

I remember once when Goto Sensei invited a spirited morote dori attack from me. I ran at him, got my hands barely on his extended arm, and then found myself somehow flying head over heels across the mat. I am probably 100 pounds heavier and a lot bigger than he is, but I went flying anyway. In terms of the above matrix, this throw incorporated the three elements of Tai Sabaki, Kokyu Ryoku, and Ki Musubi in the form of Ki no Nagare Aikido. Yet, I believe that Goto Sensei spent a lot of time working in the Kihon and Yawarakai trenches before he was able to effectively throw a large man running straight at him.

Saito Sensei was a master organizer who made the study of Aikido systematic and therefore seemingly attainable by anyone with enough perserverence. Goto Sensei, one of his students, seems to have continued with the tradition of organizing elements of the art to show both what is important in various stages of training, and a systematic pathway to more sophisticated practice.

Eventually, I am sure that pure Aikido, perhaps what John Stevens Sensei calls "air," transcends all systems and methods for organizing elements of the art. But artificial categories, while perhaps clunky and inelegant, can be powerful instructional tools that may end up helping many people achieve the precision, power, and ability to blend effortlessly in a rapidly changing and chaotic situation that marks true effectiveness in Aikido. It just takes time, effort, and perhaps a good road map.

technorati tag aikido